The head of the Palestine Monetary Authority, the emerging central bank of Palestine, has announced plans towards launching Palestine`s own digital currency, as it became known at the end of last month.

Palestinians are reportedly using the euro, U.S dollar, the Israeli shekel and the Jordanian dinar as they have no currency of their own.

According to Azzam Shawwa, authorities are turning towards a solution related to digital currencies like Bitcoin.

“That is something we would like to see.”, as he told Reuters.

“It will be called the Palestinian pound”, Shawwa said.

This peculiar decision is based on practical reasons. The authority in Palestine has no independent money-printing facilities, as Reuters pointed out.

“If we print currency, to get it into the country you would always need clearance from the Israelis and that could be an obstacle. So that is why we don’t want to go into it.”, as Shawwa elaborated.

However, the authority has been pushing to have a recognized central bank in a decade. For this reason, the currency plans are seen as part of a wider strategy to be published before the end of the year, as Shawwa explained.

The defacto central bank`s head is reportedly claiming that there is still no official timeline to launch the digital currency. This can happen “within five years”, as Reuter`s article stated. The local authority is in the process of moving into a central bank building that is to be located in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, as the publication concluded.